


seeing ghosts? there might a medical reason why

by moondew



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Gen, Toxic Relationship, despite these tags this is an introspective piece where raiden struggles to deal with his ptsd, post mgs2 but it's ambiguous really, raiden being a king kong kinnie, remnants of a relationship that wasn't real, vague timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:02:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29374293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moondew/pseuds/moondew
Summary: A flash of lightning strikes, electricity lights him like a match and there’s another near immediate rumble. It’s like a growl. Jack decides to stop pretending he is ever going to sleep tonight, or the next night, or the previous night, or some odd nights back and before. He tosses a glance to his sleeping girlfriend and then pulls her arm off him. When Jack’s bare feet touch the cool carpet, he hears the wind again. It says his name.he can't sleep in her sheets, so jack spends the night gazing into the only mirror he sees his reflection in.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	seeing ghosts? there might a medical reason why

Electricity is embedded in thunderstorms, laced through it’s rains and winds the same way thread is weaved together in knitted sweaters. New York’s skyline is radioactive with all the neon lights and the way none of them dim, ever, even as the power grid barely manages to stay online. The winds are brutal howls, the sound of wounded animals in the woods. It’s the beginning of Spring; the thunderstorm pouring torrential rain down on the soil will help birth flowers and sow seeds and thaw winter and electricity is in the air like shock therapy.

Rose drew the blinds open earlier, because if she doesn’t get natural light, she will never wake up before noon. Jack supposes he could just wake her himself, and watches the rain trace tiny rivulets on the crystal ball clear windows that peer out into the streets. He could, indeed, do that for her, but the thought drowns as quickly as it bloats to the surface of his mind. What catches his attention instead is a rolling rumble of thunder that takes Jack back to being twelve years old for a second and he, momentarily, forgets where he is. Rose’s arm, draped over his waist, twitches in her sleep, or maybe she’s awake to hear him grunt and shift his arm from beneath the pillow to press against his chest and between the mattress. Her sheets smell like vanilla and powdered sugar. It should be grounding— it is not.

He exhales. A flash of lightning strikes, electricity lights him like a match and there’s another near immediate rumble. It’s like a growl. Jack decides to stop pretending he is ever going to sleep tonight, or the next night, or the previous night, or some odd nights back and before. He tosses a glance to his sleeping girlfriend and then pulls her arm off him which is probably a metaphor for a lot of things he does to keep her from breathing down his neck or seeing what he’s up to. When Jack’s bare feet touch the cool carpet, he hears the wind again. It says his name, and his back stiffens while he thinks about what it means to hear voices where there aren’t any.

“Jack,” comes the thin voice again. “Where are you going?”

He turns to see Rose is maybe half awake or half asleep depending on your point of view. He feels a little bit like he’s been caught, and he would much prefer it if she were half asleep. She’s got a knot of hair on the left side of her head, probably from when she was knocked out with her back to him. He doesn’t know how long he had been in her bed like that— their backs to each other, refusing to communicate in a way that means something. He knows she can’t see him in the darkness, so he doesn’t even bother trying to mask the disinterest in his expression. “Bathroom,” he lies, voice croaking. It’s at least four in the morning, he hasn’t spoken for hours, focusing for so long on pretending to sleep next to her.

Rose is quiet for a moment, head falling back on the pillow and she buries her nose into the spot where his head had rested. He uses honey scented shampoo and conditioner; it probably clings to the case, and he hopes she won’t remember this in the morning. “It’s cold without you,” she says with a tiny and whispery voice, just like the howls outside. “Come back quickly, won’t you?”

Jack wonders why it is that Rose tells him to hurry up with his admittedly nonexistent need to piss, but instead of telling her that she literally will only be without him for two minutes, he says, “Sure thing.”

When he stands and leaves the room wearing the sweatpants he’d been in when he came over, Jack closes the door behind him and he knows that if Rose is still awake that’s a signal not to wait for him to come back. Maybe even once the storm rolls out of town, he’ll take the key and lock the door on his way out, slipping out of Rose’s space before she’s even awake. He does that, from time to time, pretending like he’s a monster in an old movie creeping out of his victim’s abode. Maybe he is, in a manner of speaking, or maybe it’s the other way around. Perhaps it’s more like the monsters are like him. Sometimes, he doesn’t know. His perception of the things around him warp like heated plastic.

He fares much better with a TV screen and a movie. Rose’s apartment is nice, and smells good, and she has equally nice, new furniture that looks expensive and was probably built by ex-boyfriends, knowing her. He flicks the light on over the electric stove and pulls the door to the fridge open.

The light casts him with an artificial, dying golden light as he bends at the waist to peer into his girlfriend’s fridge and he sees mostly leftovers with some take out cups littering the shelves. There’s rotting salad in a far back corner and Chinese take out boxes from a few dates ago still in there, too. Making a face, he reaches for her leftover Subway sandwich and muses that he’s not only eaten after her multiple times, he’s also eaten her out multiple times and this really isn’t the most desperate thing he’s done for food.

Besides, leftovers bother Jack for a reason that nags him in the back of the skull, like a rustling old grave.

He plucks out a jug of fruit juice too and ransacks her cabinets for a glass. He doesn’t bother being quiet. When he sits on the floor in front of her entertainment system, parking his ass on her white carpet and taking care with the red fruit juice, he’s got the sandwich hanging out of his mouth, canines digging into the cold, almost too soggy bread. Her movie cases are all familiar to him now, as is the motion of munching away on whatever he’d rationed from her fridge and cabinets while he does so. She’s got a penchant for romcoms and dramedys and historical romances, which are all fine and dandy when done well. He’s more of a Cloverfield kind of guy, and Penelope really wasn’t that bad either, come to think of it. Definitely more like a chick flick…

His thoughts are rolling into him as he peruses the selection Rose has, making a mental list of things they’ve seen together. It’s two trains colliding but as they do, his back curls and his posture relaxes and he tastes the sandwich he’s picking at. The offputting taste of stale tomato hits his tongue and Jack’s face puckers as he struggles to swallow it. It’s not the worst thing he’s put down, but he pulls the top bun off to remove the vegetable all the same. He doesn’t recall tasting it before then, but now he picks up the cold cuts on his taste buds and the italian dressing and watery lettuce. His bare chest is cold, his back exposed and the apartment is already cold to begin with because Rose likes it to be around 68 fahrenheit inside but with the storm, it’s certainly gotten colder inside. He should have put his shirt back on. It’s in the bedroom; he isn’t going back in there and risking having to get back in bed. It smells like a cupcake in there and it drags up a memory that makes him feel displaced.

(Rose asked him his exact time of birth and Jack hadn’t been sure so he relented with a lie. “4:58 AM,” he’d said, and she’d remembered and woke him at 4:58 AM, homemade cupcake in hand. It’d be horrifyingly sweet, strawberry with jam inside and topped with vanilla buttercream frosting, a candle that had melted all over it casting a waxy taste over it all. He hadn’t had the heart to tell her how awful it was, because he had enough social skills to know that this had to have been a gesture done with a lot of love and care. Probably. But Jack doesn’t know what time he was born and only has a piece of paper with a probably fake birthdate on it, anyway— it had all been like her. Sweet and artificial.)

There’s a thin layer of sweat over his arms and the cool blast of air from the AC is giving him goosebumps. He’s holding onto the case for Music and Lyrics. The actors on the cover are looking away, down at a piano, but he swears they’re looking at him. He places the case face down onto a pile he’s now deeming the “never” pile. He wipes at his nose. There’d been a layer of sweat over his top lip and he feels stubble there, too. He thinks about razor blades and pulls out another case.

As Jack pulls out Knocked Up, he wonders why Rose doesn’t just have something simple like Enchanted in her repertoire or a documentary on, why not, soap? He plucks Married Life from the cabinet and it feels like subliminal messaging on her part. He takes another bite of the sandwich and tastes vinegar.

(“My mother has been asking me about you more,” Rose had said over crispy tofu and sweet and sour sauce, and Jack had looked up from his box of noodles, chopsticks in hand, licking his lips to get rid of the excess. When he swallows, it makes him feel nervous and it feels like there’s a nail being hammered into his back to keep it straight while he diverts his attention back to his dinner and Rose keeps talking about how her mother definitely likes him and wants to know more about him and hint, hint, my family accepts you and our relationship and you’re like, totally their son in law already, and he doesn’t think that marriage was on the life plan that they dealt him when they let him go from foster care.)

It’s freezing.

The television hums to life and the living room is cast in a static infested glow. Jack pushes in Pirates of the Caribbean, likely the only normal choice in Rose’s library, and then goes to plop down on the sofa. He kicks his feet up and over the arm of the chair and keeps eating, memories functioning like background noise to the soundtrack and script. There’s a childish comfort in film, he thinks, and making decisions for himself on what to watch. He’ll take anything and everything and isn’t particularly picky but he has a preference— the older, the better; the more monsters, the better. Marriage and kids aren’t something he thinks about, but if he had a son, Jack knows he’d be eager to share Creature of the Black Lagoon and King Kong and Dracula and Godzilla with him. He sees those monsters, big and domineering, so strong and powerful that no one can stop them, and he thinks that psychologically is fascinating.

(Or maybe he’s onto something and thinks he’s a monstrous person.)

Thunder claps for the nth time in the distance, and Jack watches a movie. This isn’t the first nor last time this has happened. He feels exhaustion lacing itself through his bones and he goes languid like a cat lounging in the sunlight. Rose’s couch is comfortable— probably cost a pretty penny. Too bad she keeps it so cold here. If he could, he’d grab his shit and leave, go back to his apartment, get back in his bed and sleep until three PM. His apartment smells like carpet cleaner and his fridge is full of groceries and he has a spice rack and he likes to try different things. Jack visits the library regularly to pick up a new documentary at least once a week, and he has books about different cultures scattered around his living room. The personality he gives off and the one he keeps to his space must seem disconnected— the young man so curious about the world and the near princely persona placed upon him by the woman who keeps sugar scented candles lit.

The rain’s letting up. There’s an explosion of sound from the television speakers, and surely Rose knows he’s sitting in here watching a movie on her television with zero intention of going back, and maybe that’s what makes him the monster and not the prince. A piece of lettuce clings to his fingertips. He flicks it across the room to get lost in the carpet for who knows how long. He cleans Rose’s apartment anyway; who else is going to vacuum it up in a week’s time?

There’s a moment where he doesn’t watch the movie. He just thinks about being Jack, and how he’s gotten here in a nice apartment in an affluent part of New York City, and he thinks about how clear the line between him and this place is. A fairytale that someone else wrote for him. He doesn’t know how real it is, and how real he is. Part of him wants the fantasy.

There’s a thrum of life in the background outside the window that’s wet with little lakes and streams as people start up their lives. The movie has ended and Jack is both Jack and someone else, someone with someone else’s name and face, and there’s another person there, too, a man who wants to be the man that everyone expects him to be. And deep down, there’s probably a little part of him that hasn’t grown up, either, and never will.

In the city, everything comes to life in the same way you count down to the first note of a song. It's a build up, a sort of thunder all it's own and eventually the clouds start to seep away into the blue-gray skies like watercolors blending together on paper. He's been watching it for what feels like minutes now but likely has been an hour, gaze glazed over thicker than sugar spread over donuts. The sun isn't high in the sky, but the blue expanse is growing brighter by the moment. It's spring, time for rebirth and life and existence and the sun is popping up over the horizon, full and round like a baby-swollen belly. Jack casts a glance behind him, over the back of the white suede chair that is Rose's but feels more like his because of how much he cleans it. He waits, listens, and hears nothing to imply she's awake.

He'll risk it, he decides, skin itching. He wants to take the disguise off, he realizes, though he has no idea where the zipper is. Momentarily, Jack wonders if he could even reach it. Part of his has no desire to slough it off. It's dead skin, he thinks to himself, the body already a corpse long ago, but there's no point to a reveal. That's always the most delicate part of the show, anyway.

The door knob to the bedroom is cold against his skin, but he twists it bravely all the same. The feeling is more numb than anything, a wave of resignation washing over him. His fate is sealed one way or another depending on how alive this room is. Rose has these odd bedsheets; black and white, blocks of contrasts neatly placed side by side. Everything has it's place, and is compartmentalized so easily there. There's a lump under those sheets, where Rose snores. Despite himself, Jack just cants his head and listens for a moment. She's terribly alive, breathing in and out as easily as one is supposed to, but she's still as a corpse. He always thought sleep was a little funny like that. It's so alien to him, the thought of knocking out for a little while to rest. Of course, it isn't that he doesn't sleep, it's that...

He picks up his shirt. It's folded neatly on a cherrywood dresser, the exterior smoothly polished. He'd placed it there before getting in bed to do exactly what Rose is doing right now, but as Jack pulls his top over his head and unto his body, it does dawn on him that they're in two completely different worlds. He watches her a moment longer than intended, after pulling the chair out from her vanity to tie his shoelaces. The Rose shaped lump rises and falls, rises and falls. It's a cycle all it's own, night and day. Everything seems to work like this: On and off. On and off. On and off. His fingers are dully numb; he doesn't know if this means he's on or off.

He stands there for a moment, ready to leave. Dressed. Ready to go. Ready to leave. His feet don't work in that moment, though. He wants to move, wants to pull himself together enough to make his way back to his own apartment. A clinically clean place, something that is so entirely his own that is devoid of anything; there isn't even a cheap painting in his apartment. Jack has nothing. He supposes he lacks the need, in a way, because as he looks down at Rose's slumbering face, he thinks he's got to tighten up the suit he's wearing. He postured himself a monster but what she hands him, even in this moment, is the role of a man, the role of a prince. He's a dragon guarding the tower but in truth, Rose isn't much of a princess, and she's certainly not locked up. He has no idea what she did two Saturdays ago. It doesn't bother him on the surface, but the knowledge of that fact is knitted through his thoughts with invisible thread. Present but impossible to see, glass wedged in an existing wound.

What do they call it? A wolf in sheep's clothing? He could see himself as a dog, but that would be more freedom than he knows what to do with.

Jack wants to leave, he wants to go, and he wants the feeling of his own air conditioner, the hum of his own home. His ow speakers and books and his own perfectly constructed personality-less home. There's nothing wrong with it, he thinks. It's what he knows, and if he keeps at it long enough, he'll wear it well. Everyone else does it. What happens is that he stands there a moment longer than intended, thoughts unbearably loud before he actually moves. And when he moves, he makes a stop to pick up his mess, to throw away the Subway wrapper, and rearrange the DVD collection he'd made a mess of. The piles are put away, the glass left in the sink. He'll wash it next time he's over anyway. Rose hasn't cleaned her own apartment since they've started dating, and Jack can't stand mess anyway. He thinks if you have something of your own you should take care of it, and Rose is terrible at that.

Two worlds, different people: He's had this thought already. His brows furrow with childish frustration, though he doesn't take it as such. Jack hears a laugh but doesn't make the noise, he thinks. He needs to leave before it gets any later because he hears the bus coming now and that's around the time Rose gets up on her own. He turns the light off over the stove.

There's a repurposed ash tray by the door, full of change and keys. He picks that up, the golden metal pressing into his skin and finally he turns the doorknob. A wave of resignation washes over him. He's accepted that he's just going to leave. Part of him, unsurprisingly, hadn't really wanted to. It isn't out of affection or want: Jack feels terribly close to what people say normal is when he's in Rose's apartment, picking up her mess, pretending he doesn't realize she's trying to tell him to marry her, but he also feels terribly dead when it all happens to him. There is no part of Jack in her life and perhaps that's because Jack, himself, isn't really here.

Or maybe he is, and he's the one who isn't seeing the forest for the trees.

"Jack?"

Fuck, he thinks. Caught red-handed, he turns his head to look at Rose's sleep swollen face. Her cheeks are always like a chipmunks in the morning. Honestly? It's kind of cute.

"Rose," comes his response after a moment of silence, voice surprisingly calm. "Go back to bed. You don't have to get up for another half an hour." Which is enough incentive, to be fair. She doesn't sleep for thirty minutes. Rose sleeps for hours, and you will not get her up for even the apocalypse when she does.

She raises a hand to her face, rubbing sleep from her eyes. Exhaustion paints her voice, but it doesn't stop every word from dripping in disappointment. He's terrible at this. "Are you leaving already?"

Jack leans back a little, relaxed all the way down his spine as if he's not doing anything wrong. Socially, he knows he's doing something ludicrously rude, and though he's downplaying it as if it really isn't just that, he can't escape it. It's a mutual understanding right now, that yes, he had intended to leave her before she'd even woken up, and wouldn't even bother to leave a note. Well, at least her DVD collection would be alphabetized. He offers her a smile, something practiced and handsome and artificial.

"Come on, I've got work later. I can't stay forever."

"Later isn't now. You don't have to go. We can get breakfast at the cafe if you're hungry..." Rose's suggestion should be tempting. It isn't. Food is sustenance and truth be told, Jack can get that from just about anything. What he can't get is the moment of peace from being alone, in his own sectioned out area, devoid of Rose's personality.

His response is glib. "I'm not hungry," is all he says. Rose stares at him, bags under her eyes. Her eyes are dark, almost black as olives, but it does nothing for making her expression unreadable. He can tell she's upset. He'll pay for it later, he knows, she'll keep a passive aggressive argument going for days which will bleed into weeks which will turn into months, and that is so wonderfully normal of her. It works for her. It doesn't work for him, for whatever reason. It reminds Jack of gum in his hair. He'd rather cut it off.

She doesn't reply. Rose just looks at him. She'd pulled a sweater over her shoulders on her way into the living room, a white knit thing that probably doesn't do it's job very well. He knows what he'd like to do in a situation like this; Jack would comment on the article of clothing, and he would tell her that if she's cold, he'll keep her warm until she's ready to get up. They could have done that before, maybe, when Jack was playing the role she'd held out to him on a silver platter, and he supposes she would have reciprocated and played the role he wanted her to play, too. The curious, flirty, adventurous girl with a sparkle in her eye, someone who could debate him and challenge him. He likes that in a woman. Well, any woman, really.

Rose doesn't do anything. Out of spite, perhaps, she stands there in front of him, staring him down with her big dark eyes and it reminds him of looking into a pool of water at night. Her face is all soft angles, and though she's only just woken up, Rose still manages to pull herself together enough to look displeased. Sometimes, he wonders if the way she digs her heels into the dirt and refuses to wear that skin they'd agreed on is her way of biting him. It's almost like he's the one who should know better. That's part of their issue, he thinks; they keep thinking the other one is the one who should know better.

They're like those bedsheets of her's: Compartmentalized contrasts. She glowers at his affable smile. Black and white, like opposing sides of a chess board.

"Jack, don't leave me."

It's a command. He's almost endeared to it. It's enough of a tug on that string that keeps them connected, at least. He doesn't know what he'd call it right now, because all he wants is peace and quiet and he hasn't gotten that since he walked in.

"I'll page you when I get home," he says, and walks out.

Outside, it's damp with the remnants of a storm, and the scent of rain against concrete is heavy in the air, mingling with the chilly morning dew. It's a concoction he appreciates even more than coffee right now. It's Spring, and the sun is shining bright in the sky, warm golden cast keeping him from the early seasonal chill. He's outside.

There's a rush of warmth and coolness, another wave washing over him but this time it feels more like the entire ocean crashing into his body and it feels _good_. There is no smug satisfaction but there is relief. It's like he's been underwater, drowning and lost at sea for hours and finally, Jack is holding onto something. He grips it tight, and it's his.

It's that easy. He stands on her welcome mat outside, locks the door, and slips the key under it. He should have left it in the ash tray but his skin itches. He stands there because he knows she's standing there and his skin itches. He listens to her do nothing but stand there for about two minutes, stiller than death itself, and the cars on the street are zooming by noisily., and his skin is itching. Eventually, he hears her give up: Rose scoffs and walks away, which he hears because Jack's body is accustomed to hearing even the tiniest change.

He leaves. He does it for himself. Jack goes home, to his own bed, after duking it out with the New York morning rush. It's all too easy, like putting a band-aid over an open wound, pressing the glass in deeper.

He decides he likes it.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this over a four month period during which i struggled with the ending. i just really wanted to write something with raiden!! anyway heres the original ending which was suggested by my friend:
> 
> this is the original ending which was suggested by my friend:  
> "the last paragraph should be a callback to early 2000s fanfic. like  
> (A/N: sorry guys i didn’t know how to end this >_<;;;;;  
> raiden or whoever: Hey where is the ending Agatha  
> author: WHOA!!! raiden?!!?? what are you doing here??!!??? anyway i can’t think of one :("


End file.
